If ever the broadcast industry was poised and ready for a test, it seems to be this one. On Sept. 28 at 2:20 pm EDT, EAS broadcast participants will participate in a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System. Set up by the Federal Communications Commission’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau alongside the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the test is designed to analyze the reliability and effectiveness of the nation’s EAS warning system. The emphasis will be on the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System gateway—aka IPAWS—which is the way that common alerting protocol-based EAS alerts are disseminated.